


There Are Secrets in These Halls

by red_racer_fan



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dave is not okay, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Meteorstuck, karkat discovers this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 13:10:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14309376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_racer_fan/pseuds/red_racer_fan
Summary: Karkat walks in on Dave being a bit less than okay.





	There Are Secrets in These Halls

As the credits of the sixth consecutive movie starring troll Will Smith rolled, the cabin fever set in. Having essentially spent his entire life stuck inside his hive, Karkat was all too familiar with the plummeting sensation in his lungs, like the air was too heavy to hold. He needed to get out, or if not that, at least walk around somewhere. When he first arrived on the meteor every sporadic creak in the vents immediately set off a flight or fight response. However, since Gamzee was “retrieved” (captured) by Vriska, Karkat found that it wasn’t that bad.

Wandering the meteor was only a temporary reprieve until the crushing emptiness of space eventually corrupted that too. But, Karkat also knew that any kind of reprieve, no matter how temporary, should be treated like fucking gold on this literal nightmare sphere.

Despite his grumpy demeanor and loud attitude, Karkat was light footed. He’d become accustomed to the heavy breathing from the vents, and learned to accept that sometimes they just made that sound, whether there was someone inside them or not. He traveled down a twisting path of hallways that had no sense of organization, until he reached a wide open room.

It wasn’t the only room on the meteor with a window, but it was the only room on the meteor that had a window _and_ was guaranteed to be empty. In front of what Karkat assumed was probably something stronger than glass that looked out into the void, there was a rumpled pile of blankets and pillows from his last adventure here. Karkat shuffled over and plopped himself in front of it, figuring that it wasn’t all that different from daydreaming at the wall in his room, but the change in scenery was nice. He could look out into the vastness of space and pretend that maybe Alternia wasn’t obliterated, that maybe, assuming he hadn’t immediately been culled the second he entered into the military, he was threshecutioner traveling in space on his was to annex a new planet.

It was a hollow dream and when he poked at the thought a little too much it fell apart, because who was he kidding? He wouldn’t survive war for a minute, he couldn’t even stop a scabbling group of teenagers let alone, actually kill someone. But for a little while, it was okay.

Karkat wasn’t sure how much time had past when his thoughts were interrupted by a muffled crash from outside. Jumping up suddenly, his sickle dropped from his syntax into his ready hand. He stalked toward the hall where his ears picked up a quiet steady noise coming from somewhere down the way. His dream of Alternia inspired a thumping need in his chest to prove himself, and therefore he decided against the small part of himself that wanted to flee the common room, and pursued the noise. Another crash pushed down the hall.

Hesitantly, he walked toward the steady beat, it got louder as he approached. The beat didn’t sound quite like drums, but it still kind of did? He wasn’t sure, he continued on listening to what he thought might be the sound of shattering glass.

When he figured he was about three rooms away he caught another noise accompanying the sound of breaking materials and the constant beat. It sounded kind of like a chant, but the words were unintelligible. For better or for worse he walked to the door, and listened closely. The beat pressed on against the chaotic destruction of whatever was inside the room, the words became clearer as they drifted out from under the door.

“Because the law don’t listen to a single crow’s caw, if it don’t fit the system it’s considered a flaw. That poison possessed the body’s blood and left me outside until I abide. Who said ‘that’s the way to keep the masses at bay.’ Muted ours tongues so we have nothing to say. And god, those puppets pack a punch, but I’ve got a hunch that they don’t know that much.”

After listening to the sound of semi-reasonable language and determining that it was probably not some monster that’s been trapped in the bowels of the meteor, Karkat felt like he might be eavesdropping. Yet something , _maybe my non-existent Knight of Blood powers finally decided to make a fucking appearance_ he thought callously, wanted him to knock on that door. And in a truly Karkat fashion, he barged in instead.

The destruction of the room was truly an anomaly in itself, it was as though someone has gone to painstaking efforts to move a lot of furniture here just to destroy it. There was fluff flying in every direction, what looked like grotesque stuffed animals were shredded and lying all over the floor. Complementing the decor, broken glass, from some kind of unrecognizable machinery that had been toppled over and ripped apart, littered the floor. And in the eye of the hurricane was Dave Fucking Strider.

He turned to look at Karkat and literally jumped. His face his was so open for a second that Karkat could see a series of emotions flicker across it regardless of the shades obscuring his eyes. It started with shock, then fear, and ended with relief just as the stoic mask blanked out any further details. His sword was drawn and the remains of whatever he was just slicing up fell from the air to the ground comically. A moment passed and no one said a word, the sound of the beat boomed in here and Karkat could finally see why. On either wall a giant set of speakers, hooked into what looked like weird floating discs in the far corner of the room.

“Sup.” Dave said nodding his head. He looked between Karkat’s face and his hand. Then realizing that he was still holding his sickle, Karkat put it back into his syntax. A fucking wiggler could tell from the state of the room that this might have been a sensitive matter but he couldn’t stop the words that escaped his mouth.

“Nothing much, just heard some raving lunatic fucking obliterating whatever constitutes as furniture on this sad pile of shit drifting through fucking horror land.” Karkat’s volume increased with every word that passed his lips. “‘Sup’ with you? ”

“This and that.” Dave said as though he weren’t standing in what looked like a plush factory that had recently suffered a horrible bombing accident. Kakat raised an eyebrow at him. Dave stared back stone cold. Sadly for Dave, Karkat was one hundred percent sure that if there was one thing he fucking excelled at it was being stubborn. Dave shuffled his feet a little bit, Karkat’s eyebrow and general expression of disbelief remained persistent. Finally, Dave broke the lull in conversation.

“This has been an excellent chat, really it was, its going on my renowned list of top confabulation experiences, they’ll be handing out medals when they catch a whiff of this juicy convo in the tabloids. You’ll have a tough time holding back the ladies, or-or the dudes I’m not judging,” Dave said putting his hands up, “when they hear what stellar skills you have. But sadly, yours truly has to make a departure at the airport going straight to The Fuck Outta Here. So if you don’t mind I’m gonna grab my gear and vamoose.” he said backing up toward the corner. At some point during his spiel Dave slipped his sword back into his syntax in favour of making hand gestures to accent his points.

“Uh Strider,” _holy fuck what am I doing?_ Karkat thought that his mouth must be having a fucking wonderful time ignoring him and just relishing in whatever kind of bullshit situation it would eventually put him into. “Are you, uh, okay?”

Dave went still for just a moment before resuming his previous loose half-fidget as he collected his floating discs. “I’m right as fucking rainbow rain, which is pretty fucking right. Not right wing though, like the direct opposite of that, call me the liberal agenda pusher. Saving the forests and protesting pipelines” then more bitter but in a quieter clearly audible tone he half muttered “God, Rose would be having a fucking field day right now. I got freud’s wet dreams coming right out the ass. Arg, that makes it worse.” Dave said as he finished gathering the cords from his discs to the speakers and putting it into his syntax with the discs.

“Well, off I go on my merry way.” he said walking towards Karkat. Just as Dave tried to walk past him, Karkat’s hand shot out and grabbed Dave’s wrist. Dave flinched, and Karkat hastily retracted his hand.

“Hey, uh, want to watch a movie with me?”

If the slight raise in his eyebrows were anything to go by, Dave was shocked. Karkat of course had no way to know for sure, but Karkat took the silence that followed as a confirmation.

“You don’t have to but, you uh. look like you might want to uh, yeah.” Karkat continued on and Dave regained his composure.

“Why fucking not.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey Y'all,  
> I'm probably just going to leave this as a quick one shot. I wrote this in one sitting and figured I may as well put it up online, hope that you enjoy it. If I continue it, it'll probably just be self indulgent fluff where hey talk about there problems, so who knows?  
> Happy 413!


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